Tuesday, June 26

Rumors Heating Up

Gotta love this time of year. I think there are 17 rumors for every trade that actually gets consummated, but the level of talk is absolutely insane. Here are a few bits and pieces:

1. The Magic are still pursuingRashard Lewis, and it looks as though they want to have their cake (Lewis) and eat it, too (Milicic). How the Magic plan to accomplish that is a mind-bender, since Lewis' deal will eat up a huge chunk of money, as will Darko's, and don't they have some other guy named Howard? Dwight something or other? His deal expires after next year, and I'm guessing he's going to want to get about double what he's making now ($6 mil.). Be interesting to see what kind of team the Magic manage to surround those 3 with, considering they would take up more than half of the salary cap space.

2. Kevin Durant will be on the cover of NCAA March Madness 08. Durant follows in the footsteps of former Sonic Quintin Dailey, who graced the cover of Tron.

3. Luke Ridnour is rumored to be headed for Atlanta if the Hawks aren't able to get Mike Conley with the 11th pick in the draft. The pick would be coming to Seattle for Ridnour. Not sure what else we'd have to take back, but here's the most likely guy.

14 comments:

Anonymous
said...

I really don't care which of the two (Earl or Luke) the Sonics trade, as long as one of them gets dealt. This situation is screwed up and it's dumb to pay both of them starting wages when both of them hate coming off the bench. I think Earl is due for a better season this year - last year he was just awful on offense and he's not normally that bad.

Earl is limited offensively. If you have any hope for upside, you want Luke, who has the capability to lead a team and distrubute the rock.

Earl is a backup, period. On a good team, that is his role, and it is what his role should be. Anyone that wants to believe he has the offensive game and leadership of a starting PG is fooling themselves.

I'm right behind you t-dawg. As I've been trying to get thru to those guys at sonicscentral.com, Ridnour is a leader and will work to improve himself, Watson won't. Watson's best season was for 24 games people, don't forget that. Luke has shown progress when allowed to run the offense and commands respect, Earl misses open shots and doesn't distribute the ball well at all. Just my two cents, keep Frodo unless we are getting a starter in return, because Earl needs someone to play behind.

Also, I totally agree that if the Sonics are only going to trade one point guard, that point guard has to be Earl. If Watson's contract was going to expire in the next year, then I can see hanging onto him and developing another point, but his deal runs for another 45 years, so there is absolutely no reason to keep him around.

Anyone else read what John Hollinger had to say about the draft. Here's the link:

http://tinyurl.com/2g2w4z

He really doesn't like Acie Law (or Afflalo or Pruitt), but he's got Kevin Durant ranked so high that he's the best player to come out of college in the last 5 years. Yeah, better than Carmelo or D-Wade, or anybody else coming out of college. C'mon Portland, take Oden!

I couldn't disagree with you guys more. However, Ridnour and Watson have to go. The PG position in Seattle in terrible. I've hated Ridnour even before we draft him. Hell that every draft night I even went on JT the Brick's show to rant about how we should have taken this PG from Brazil instead (Barbosa).

But I digress, Luke is a adequate backup point guard and Watson is a me first point guard. In that respect I agree that Watson is a problem, but everyone in the NBA knows he's a problem. Jerry West tried gave him a shot in Memphis and gave up on him. Denver gave him a shot with Melo and gave up on him after signing him to that ridiculous contract.

The point here is that you cannot move Watson without taking on some else's problem. If the Sonics are going to rebuild you have to be willing compromise either roster wise or by trading a guy for 50 cents on the dollar. To that point I would compromise by making Watson my backup and bring in a new PG (easier said than done). Trading Ridnour for the 11th pick would be great start, because this a deep draft. Plus, there are plenty on mid-level teams looking to move up to that spot. We might even be able to spin that pick for another PG or draft a point guard like Javaris Crittenton or a more shooting oriented guard like Rodney Stuckey or Acie Law.

Plus, I think the whole race and local guy factors have to be brought up. Are people defending Luke because he's a northwest guy or dare I say it white? Perhaps not, maybe people are doing what Nuss think Billy Knight must being doing that is remember his great games. Perhaps his bad play is in part due to the ball change. He was looking great until they went back to the old ball. If Luke bad play being chalked up the new/old effect then I say even more emphatically that he as to go. Do we really want a head case running the team afraid to shot the ball?

Debate has been run many times. One thing I am thinking about is how good would either have to do next year to "deserve" to stay, team wins, offense and defense?

15pts a game and good shooting would be nice but not enough on its own. Defense is part of the picture but only part hard to be precise about. But one other criteria is pretty straight forward. If team is over 45% win after November or December I could live with them or the better one of them. If team is under 45% neither "deserves" to stay. Leadership is job 1 for a PG.

I think the best answer is that neither of these guys are the answer, and least not a good answer. My problem with keeping Earl is that he doesn't seem to think he's a backup, and if the Sonics were to bring in a guard from the draft, I can't imagine Earl would be happy in a reserve role, which means we'd have to deal with the same crap we did this year.

I'm not as down on Ridnour as most are, simply because he has shown some ability in his career. He played really well at the beginning of the year, then just went into the tank at the end of December/beginning of December, centered around when Hill lost confidence in him. I ran a big thing on numbers towards the end of the season, and neither really had an advantage, although Watson was better at creating offense (he was horrible at shooting, though).

I also don't think Earl's status has been so diminished that he's now untradable. It's certainly gone down since the Sonics picked him up, but I'm sure that some team in the league - especially after draft day when they can't find a PG - will be interested in him.

And while there are plenty of examples of race influencing people's decision-making (see Nash, Steve), I don't think it's the case here, at least from what I can tell.

I agree, either we keep Ridnour and make him our PG, or we trade both and get an Acie Law.

Also most mock drafts have us taking Glen Davis in the 2nd round. While I don't think he'll be in the 2nd, why is it that everyone thinks we need him? I also think he's a good player and wouldn't mind him in the 2nd.

"No one was arguing that Watson is better than Ridnour. But what you don't seem to understand is that to have a winning team, even an 8th seed, SOMEBODY HAS TO PLAY SOME FUCKING D!"

Thanks for the language.

It is funny you think I don't understand, though. I very much do understand the game, and also many people seem to espouse Watson's game over Ridnour's, which is shocking and counter-intuitive in my eyes.

What I understand, at every level, you teach skilled players to play D, not defenders to thrive offensively.

To have a guy run the point on your team that is a selfish offensive debacle, regardless of defensive ability, is a mistake.

Regardless of team personnel.

And you can mold your offensively skilled guys into suitable defenders, if you can coach effectively and have enough pieces. And I believe all 3 of those players can play "good enough" D if need be, if the team is competing and they see it is for the betterment of the team.

Of course, that's just me. I've only won 5 league championships as a player in 6 years of HS/college, and have coached several league champions as well.

What do I know that an anonymous poster with mad skillz in caps and english linguistics doesn't?